Vegetable biology and breeding in the genomics era

Vegetable crops provide a rich source of essential nutrients for humanity and represent critical economic values to global rural societies. However, genetic studies of vegetable crops have lagged behind major food crops, such as rice, wheat and maize,thereby limiting the application of molecular breeding. In the past decades, genome sequencing technologies have been increasingly applied in genetic studies and breeding of vegetables. In this review, we recapitulate recent progress on reference genome construction, population genomics and the exploitation of multi-omics datasets in vegetable crops. These advances have enabled an in-depth understanding of their domestication and evolution, and facilitated the genetic dissection of numerous agronomic traits, which jointly expedites the exploitation of state-of-the-art biotechnologies in vegetable breeding. We further provide perspectives of further directions for vegetable genomics and indicate how the ever-increasing omics data could accelerate genetic, biological studies and breeding in vegetable crops.

Natural variation in STAYGREEN contributes to low-temperature tolerance in cucumber

Low-temperature(LT)stress threatens cucumber production globally;however,the molecular mechanisms underlying LT tolerance in cucumber remain largely unknown.Here,using a genome-wide association study(GWAS),we found a naturally occurring single nucleotide polymorphism(SNP)in the STAYGREEN(CsSGR)coding region at the gLTT5.1 locus associated with LT tolerance.Knockout mutants of CsSGR generated by clustered regularly interspaced palindromic repeats(CRISPR)/CRISPR-associated nuclease 9 exhibit enhanced LT tolerance,in particularly,increased chlorophyll(Chl)content and reduced reactive oxygen species(ROS)accumulation in response to LT.Moreover,the C-repeat Binding Factor 1(CsCBF1)transcription factor can directly activate the expression of CsSGR.We demonstrate that the LT-sensitive haplotype CsSGRHapA,but not the LT-tolerant haplotype CsSGR^(HapG)could interact with NON-YELLOW COLORING 1(CsNYC1)to mediate Chl degradation.Geographic distribution of the CsSGR haplotypes indicated that the CsSGR^(HapG)was selected in cucumber accessions from high latitudes,potentially contributing to LT tolerance during cucumber cold-adaptation in these regions.CsSGR mutants also showed enhanced tolerance to salinity,water deficit,and Pseudoperonospora cubensis,thus CsSGR is an elite target gene for breeding cucumber varieties with broad-spectrum stress tolerance.Collectively,our findings provide new insights into LT tolerance and will ultimately facilitate cucumber molecular breeding.

Rare SNP Identified a TCP Transcription Factor Essential for Tendril Development in Cucumber

Rare genetic variants are abundant in genomes but less tractable in genome-wide association study. Here we exploit a strategy of rare variation mapping to discover a gene essential for tendril development in cucumber （Cucumis sativus L.）. In a collection of 〉3000 lines, we discovered a unique tendril-less line that forms branches instead of tendrils and, therefore, loses its climbing ability. We hypothesized that this unusual phenotype was caused by a rare variation and subsequently identified the causative single nucleotide poly- morphism. The affected gene TEN encodes a TCP transcription factor conserved within the cucurbits and is expressed specifically in tendrils, representing a new organ identity gene. The variation occurs within a pro- tein motif unique to the cucurbits and impairs its function as a transcriptional activator. Analyses of transcrip- tomes from near-isogenic lines identified downstream genes required for the tendril＇s capability to sense and climb a support. This study provides an example to explore rare functional variants in plant genomes.